tip

I've been watching a PBS series called The Greeks tonight. Much to my surprise, an early segment showed how we know about the so called Dark Ages of Greece through archeologists digging through the garbage dumps of ancient Greece. Guess what kind of things they found in the trash? Papyri of ancient Greek writings. Preeminently Homer.

Thanks, ancient Greeks, for throwing stuff out. Even the premier texts of Western Civilization.

And thanks, Mr. Joyce for making me see how important this is.

 

Happy Bloomsday, 2016!

Bloomsday snuck up on me this year. (Apparently it did on Google Blogger too, as I just noticed that the wavy red line beneath it as I write means that they don't recognize Bloomsday as a word. Come on, Google, you've had over a hundred years to catch up on this.) I was actually scrolling through the more depressing news of the day when I saw an article about Ulysses in the Daily Beast. It's about the judge who rendered the verdict that lifted the ban on Ulysses, and you can read it HERE.

The writer of the piece, Ben Cosgrove, notes how incisive Judge John M. Woolsey's literary observations are, and quotes from his opinion thusly:

"Joyce has attempted—it seems to me, with astonishing success—to show how the screen of consciousness with its ever-shifting kaleidoscopic impressions carries, as it were on a plastic palimpsest, not only what is in the focus of each man's observation of the actual things about him, but also in a penumbral zone residua of past impressions, some recent and some drawn up by association from the domain of the subconscious."

Thank you, Judge Woolsey.

Why We Are No Longer Shocked by “Ulysses” - The New Yorker

Why We Are No Longer Shocked by “Ulysses” - The New Yorker:



'via Blog this'

Wordplay...Bloomsday

...is just around the corner!

and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. 

And, yes, the title, Ulysses, contains the word "yes"!

As far as the Wake is concerned, I hope you are not getting worn down--"Weakening Fans" is an anagram for Finnegans Wake!